Challenges of collecting child support on the rise

For the past 14 years, Susan Whitney has been fighting to get her son's father to help support his child financially. On many days, it feels like a losing battle.

“I am owed more than $15,000 in back child support,” Whitney, 44, said. “I have gone years without receiving anything.”

The Council Bluffs mother said she's tried everything - including asking the Iowa Department of Human Services' Child Support Recovery Unit for help. But the unit hasn't produced the missing dollars like she hoped it would.

She has received periodic payments over the years - when her son's father isn't working for cash “under the table” and reporting being jobless.

“But my case just sat there for a long time untouched,” Whitney said. “They said there is a waiting period. And I waited. I think they got frustrated with me. I called once a week.”

The state's Child Support Recovery Unit helps custodial parents receive court-ordered child support payments - some of its recoveries reimburse taxpayers for the cost of welfare. It also helps parents establish paternity and support orders, and it enforces support orders.

Only parents who apply for establishment or enforcement services, or those who are receiving or have received public assistance like welfare and Medicaid, are eligible for recovery unit services.

Collections declining

And even those who are eligible might have a lesser chance of receiving what they're owed than in the past. Since the 2008 recession, the unit has seen its collections decline, said Carol Eaton, bureau chief for the state's Child Support Recovery Unit.

The declines largely are because to economic woes that have meant budget and staff reductions for the unit. The economy also has forced more parents who owe money to lose their jobs or accept less pay, decreasing how much the state can collect, Eaton said.

Even though the unit can take mandatory child support payments from unemployment benefits, a growing number of benefits are expiring, Eaton said.

In the 2010 budget year, the unit collected $27.1 million from unemployment benefits. That dropped to $14.7 million in 2012.

“And that is going to continue going down as people go off unemployment,” she said. “But they are not working.”

Total child support collections for the unit have dropped from about $351 million in the 2009 budget year to just over $332 million in the 2012 budget year. The declines are projected to continue, dropping to below $330 million for the current budget year and in the 2014 and 2015 budget years.

Still, the federal government ranks Iowa fourth in the nation in its efficiency collecting child support. It collects about 73 percent of child support in the month its due, and it collects almost $6 for every public dollar spent on the collection effort.

Hard to collect

The Child Support Recovery Unit operates 22 field offices, including one in Cedar Rapids. But staffing within the unit has been cut since the 2008 budget year, Eaton said.

The unit counted 620 full time employees that year, compared to the 478 workers making collections for the state right now. And the employees who remain don't have an easy task, Eaton said.

They have to find people who can be hard to track down and sometimes don't want to be located, according to Eaton. They have to work with employers and other state agencies.

“There is a population that thrives on staying a step ahead of us,” she said. “Some people are paid in cash on purpose.”

There also is a population that is difficult to collect from once they are found - like those serving time in prison.

“We'll collect pennies on a dollar because their wages are so small,” she said.

In March, the state's recovery unit counted 4,437 people serving time in prison who owed child support, according to Roger Munns, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services.

Of that total, just 1,357 paid something toward their child support dues, Munns said. Some of the inmates who didn't pay owed on older children, making them harder to collect from, Munns said. Or, perhaps, they didn't make any money.

Fred Scaletta, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said many inmates receive a payment or allowance for various jobs within the facility - maintenance or laundry or kitchen work. He said the prison deducts 50 percent of an inmate's pay if there is a child support order in place.

According to Department of Corrections statistics, $349,651 in child support was collected from Iowa prison inmates in the 2012 budget year. That's down from $356,221 in the 2011 budget year and $374,484 in the 2010 budget year.

Scaletta said that decline in prison collections is due largely to a drop in the overall inmate population.

Julie Gilmere, a North Liberty-based attorney who focuses on child support collection, says some of the parents who fail to receive much help from the state end up in her office. And, in recent years, that traffic has increased.

“I have four to six people calling a week who want issues resolved and have no funds,” said Gilmere, of Gilmere Law Office. “I could take 20 cases a month, if I wanted. But you can't do that many.”

Gilmere said, from her perspective, that staffing cuts at the state have hurt both people trying to receive payments and those trying to make them. And Gilmere said she doesn't see the situation easing any time soon.

Not only is the economy making it more difficult to collect child support, but she said economic issues are at the heart of many divorces - laying the ground work for more child support orders.

“It really is the most active I've seen it over the years,” she said. “This is the most I've seen of really desperate people trying to fix things.”